Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Craig Brown and AN Wilson lose to Jasper Gerard

I'm sorry to hear that Craig Brown and AN Wilson have been dropped by the Daily Telegraph. And just before Christmas. Well, I say sorry but really I only read the paper for Mandrake goss: Brown's parodies remain very funny in the Eye; Wilson I sometimes used to read when he had an eccentric column in the Evening Standard; otherwise his books and sensibility mean as much to me as Paul Gascoigne's ear wax.

The good news however is that Jasper Gerard continues to flog his prose tropes at the Telegraph. I understand he writes a sports column; not something I would read. His last restaurant review, of The Pass Restaurant in Horsham, West Sussex, cost the paper £96.93 for a four courser. I assume he paid at least a 10% tip on top: one can only suppose that an outlay of this sort, to patronise an honest business with a lot of homespun burble, must have been borne by the likes of Brown and Wilson.

I notice that Gerard "slurps" his soup, that he calls people "folk" and potatoes "spuds". The common touch, he's got it. I wonder how his terrorist comedy novel is coming along.

Sheila Vogel-Coupe: Madame Arcati's woman of the year - click pic for more

Dr Brian Cox and the Wonder of his Solar Smile - click teeth, you can't miss them

Why his popular astronomy series (just ended) told us nothing new

Blog Archive

Madame Arcati: Now I am a thing

"The world of the astrologer isn't usually on our radar, but naturally there are a host of them out there online, many touting celebrity clients. Few, however, are as entertaining and wilfully perverse as Madame Arcati, which seems to combine a heightened awareness of modern media with a fervent belief in a mystical order, and draws in all manner of names into its orbit."things magazine

"Madame Arcati's blog is one of the nastiest places I have ever seen on the net. Superficial, narrow-minded, spiteful, often slanderous... and utterly unreliable, because the blogger (and most of her/his so-called 'unimpeachable' sources) remain utterly anonymous." - An unfamous keyboarder

"IF you like viciousness, the Madame Arcati blog is worth a butcher's.Indeed, so contentious are her comments about Sunday Times deputy editor [sic] Nick Hellen that Axegrinder's Anadin-popping lawyer has refused me permission to repeat a single word of them. Sorry about that."Press Gazette

"Madame Arcati is brimming with smug self-satisfaction over her own smartness and wit. She's taking herself as seriously as a hen who's just laid an egg. She doesn't know that the only true humour is self-humour.Consequently, she irritates, but she doesn't entertain. Hence her numerous opponents.God, I hope I'll get the glory of the sidebar for this!"Famous Anon

"Who are you?"Bryan Appleyard

"I do realise Mme A is anonymous, superficial, often slanderous, and ultimately unreliable - this last is the way of anonymous phenomena dating back to the political pamphlets of the 17th century. I guess I thought those elements cancelled themselves out: once you've got slanderous (and outrageous) and unreliable, you're clearly not looking at it in the same way as, say, Andrew Sullivan. It becomes about itself. It's a construct." Ms Baroque